Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Wide outer lanes are a good start, especially on bridges. As long as they're wide enough to accommodate plowcrap. Really, though, this is the primary recurring problem with grant-funded bicycle/pedestrian specific infrastructure. It's no one's job to make sure it's maintained. A few weeks ago, it was littered with street sweeper debris and broken glass. Today, it's buried in plowcrap (a delightful blend of ice, sand, salt, glass, cans, cigarette butts and fast food packaging) and in a few years it'll be a blighted craterscape that no one would want to ride a bike on. Just like all of the other bike lanes.

3 comments:

I was wondering about this. A couple of days after our first big storm, I rode up there to check it out and it looked like someone actually plowed it. Then a couple of days after last week's monster blizzard, someone had plowed it again. I have no idea who is doing it but it was definitely rideable.

Yep, that's the challenge - you get the infrastructure, but then who will maintain it. Amsterdam, Copenhagen, even Oulu Finland riders crow about their infrastructure and it's maintenance. Here in Chicago we have some infrastructure, but like you, no maintenance. One step at a time I guess. Envious of your separated bridge bike lane though. Scroll down in one of my recent posts to see what happened to the bike lane on one local street (Augusta Blvd) after the recent blizzard..pretty typical. http://dingdingletsride.com/2011/02/03/biking-the-day-after-the-snowpocalypse/

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